Professional sports leagues and teams are actively investing millions to enhance the wireless and broadband capabilities of their stadiums to support their fans' increased use of mobile devices. The leagues and teams are seeking innovative mobile software solutions to transform their relationship with their fans and partners. The leagues and teams therefore recognize the importance of the fan experience and its impact on revenue generation. The need for fan engagement solutions is so acute that leading media and technology companies serving the sports and entertainment industry have created business units to focus on enhancing the fan experience.
Certain solutions exist in the charity auction context, such as those that enable charity auction attendees to bid via their mobile devices on items up for auction. However, the mobile software solutions employed in the charity auction context are limited in that they do not allow users to self-register, instead requiring users to be manually registered by auction administrative personnel. Although registration by auction administrative personnel is feasible for the number of attendees typically attending a charity auction, it would not be possible in the entertainment events context, as thousands of spectators often attend at these events. Likewise, mobile software solutions employed in the charity auction context do not allow self-checkout on a mobile device.
These existing solutions are further limited in that they do not restrict auction participants to those who actually attend the auction. Indeed, charity auctions benefit from having bidders who are not present participate in the auction. This is also true for general online auction systems such as eBay®. In contrast, sporting and event venues may want to restrict participation in a mobile program to attendees at the stadium in order to provide an incentive to attend the game in person rather than watch it on television.
Further, the existing solutions allow only for customer-to-business payments. For example, an eBay customer pays directly to the eBay business from which it is purchasing a product. In a professional sports setting, a sport team may wish to outsource management of payments to another company, thus requiring a more complicated payment process that allows for business-to-business payments.